The façade plays a central role in determining a building's environmental performance, influencing how light, heat and air are exchanged with its surroundings. The environmental impact of a façade is based on two major factors; the first being basic material construction, and second the incorporation of operable elements such as windows, blinds, shades and shutters.
As part of a growing movement to develop sustainable buildings, a promising strategy is for buildings to actively adapt and respond to changing climatic conditions. In the context of the façade, this strategy may be implemented by motorizing operable façade elements, so that, for example, shades can extend and retract automatically. Sensors can take environmental data (i.e., temperature, light intensity and wind flow), and, utilizing computational intelligence, the building can optimize its environmental profile in a responsive manner.
This concept of a responsive façade has been termed “intelligent skin”, indicating the analogy with natural systems.
The promise of this concept has, however, been limited by the particular openable devices that are currently available. The basic designs for windows, blinds, shades and shutters were set many years ago. While well-suited for manual control, these devices have significant limitations regarding their capacity for smooth, continuous and efficient motorized control.
In order to justify the investment in developing truly responsive façades, operable elements need to be considered as part of an integrated package with structural, glazing and mechanical systems. To successfully implement this strategy, such devices need to be adapted according to a building's specific design. Presently available shading and ventilation systems have significant limitations in their ability to be customized.
For example, it is a significant challenge to design blinds that fit non-orthogonal openings. A second challenge is when a shading system must adapt to a non-vertical orientation. Other limits are encountered when designing operable ventilation systems which are often based on rotating louvers.
The aim of the invention disclosed herein is to overcome these limitations in an economic and elegant way. It offers a new method to make operable façade devices which provide a surface of controlled permeability, smoothly varying between a covered state and a largely opened state.
Like blinds or shades, these devices are capable of controlling solar gain. Additionally, the present invention may be fabricated with sufficient strength to act in a structural capacity, thus providing the capability to control air flow in a similar manner as operable louvers.
Unlike louvers whose elements rotate to a position that is orthogonal to the surface of the façade, the elements in the disclosed invention move laterally. The invention may be thus termed “laminar cladding”, indicating the organized layers of smooth laminar flow.
The benefits of this lateral control are two-fold: a) laminar devices are visually integrated with façade surface, rather than appearing as an appliqué, and b) it is possible to achieve greater transparency in the retracted position relative to a covered area compared to louvers.
Further advantages to the disclosed invention are the ability to cover any shape opening, to be installed in any orientation, and the ability to define unique design patterns for shading panels.